The AHRMM annual conference and exhibition is taking place August 6-9, in Orlando Florida. In preparation for the big event, HealthCare Business News sat down with Laura P. Kowalczyk, the AHRMM Advisory Board Chair, to find out what hospital supply chain stakeholders can expect at the event. Here is our conversation with Kowalczyk, who is also the vice president of Supply Chain and Support Services at UAB Medicine.
HCB News: Who or what inspired you to follow a career in health care? Laura P. Kowalczyk: I entered the health care field as a health lawyer. Representing hospitals and clinical personnel provided a broad level of exposure to the health care field. I was fortunate to enter into the internal hospital environment early in my career, which eventually led to taking on more operational experience and roles that led me into my current role.
HCB News: Can you tell us about your history with the AHRMM and why you first joined? LK: I have been an AHRMM member for 18 years, and have served on the AHRMM Advisory Board for the last 4 years. As someone who did not start or grow up in the supply chain, AHRMM has served as a critical component of my supply chain career development. One of my early mentors in the supply chain was leader of the AHRMM Advisory Board at the time I entered the hospital supply chain, and he encouraged me very early in my career to join AHRMM. It has proved invaluable to my professional growth, and the development of relationships across the field.
HCB News: What did that journey look like, from joining AHRMM to taking on your current leadership role? LK: The journey has been a challenging but a fun, wild ride. The connections and relationships that I have acquired throughout my years of participation have been critically important to my knowledge growth and development as a supply chain leader. Similarly, exposing my teams along the way to similar networking and education has helped us grow together through sharing our practices and learning from others.
HCB News: Are we seeing any long term impact, or improvements, to supply chain management going forward from the pandemic?
LK: Absolutely. I think we all feel the heightened recognition at the top of our organizations for the importance and contribution of the supply chain to the care of our patients and customers. There is also a concerted and organized effort among all trading partners in the health care supply chain to collaborate and share information and data recognizing that true resiliency cannot be achieved without transparency and trust. In addition, across all supply chains we cannot deny that the just-in-time (JIT) inventory model so many industries, including health care, moved to many years ago is being questioned if not completely re-tooled to include models that contemplate safety or excess stock.
